Driver charged with capital murder in SXSW rampage

Rashad Owens charged with driving drunk and killing two people at the South By Southwest festival in Austin.

AUSTIN - By most accounts, Rashad Charjuan Owens, like thousands of other up-and-comers, had come to the South by Southwest festival seeking fame and fortune in the music business.

The 21-year-old aspiring rap star found notoriety instead.

Owens, a father of six from Killeen, was charged Friday with one count of capital murder that could leave him facing execution by lethal injection if convicted. He is accused of plowing a borrowed car into the festival crowd, killing two and injuring at least 22 in a shocking attack that made international headlines. He remained jailed in lieu of $3 million bail Friday.

Prosecutors have not said whether they will seek the death penalty.

They said additional charges could be forthcoming. Police said only one charge was filed because the law requires two or more deaths in the commission of another felony to seek capital murder.

"This ain't no good. No damn good," said Los Angeles resident Lashawn Lindsey, 26, shaking his head Friday as he stood along Red River Street where the bloody rampage occurred. "It didn't need to happen. It never should've happened."

A self-styled "gangsta" rap wannabe like Owens portrayed himself on his Facebook page, Lindsey indicated he understood why Owens, with a distrust of police from past arrests, might have instinctively fled. Then he stopped midsentence, describing his sorrow over what he called "no-sense deaths."

'Bound to happen'

Owens rapped under the name KillingAllBeatz and K.A.B254, according to the music-sharing site SoundCloud.com, where he posted his songs. Lindsey, tattoos up and down his arms like Owens, said he raps as MFG.

"This was bound to happen," Lindsey told a reporter. "Running from the (law) ... As a white dude, you can't understand, man."

He paused for a minute: "I might've been."

Killed in the early-morning tragedy were Jamie Ranae West, 27, an Austin boutique clerk, and Dutch music firm official Steven Craenmehr, 35. Two of the injured remained hospitalized in critical condition, two were listed in serious condition, two in fair and two in good condition. The condition of West's husband, Evan, 29, deteriorated from fair to serious.

On Friday, as authorities continued to investigate why Owens fled a traffic stop and rammed his speeding car into a packed street crowd outside the Mohawk Club about 12:30 a.m., new details began to emerge about the run-up to the tragedy.

According to a police arrest affidavit made public when the charge was filed, Owens told an officer at the hospital that he fled because he had arrest warrants pending against him "and didn't want to go to jail for 5 years for something he didn't do." He told officers those pending charges were "kidnapping warrants ... part of a custody battle for his daughter."

Above alcohol limit

The affidavit shows Owens was taken to University Medical Center Brackenridge, where "he was showing signs of intoxication." Tests showed a blood-alcohol level of .114 after his arrest - higher than the legal limit of .08 for operating a motor vehicle in Texas.

According to the affidavit, a police officer initially tried to stop Owens for driving without headlights on an Interstate 35 frontage road in downtown Austin. Owens fled through a service station parking lot, headed the wrong way down a side street and then into the SXSW crowd.

"The (police officer's dash camera) video shows the Honda accelerating into the crowds ... crowds of people who are hit by the car and flung into the air," the report states. "The video shows that Owens drives for almost three city blocks, accelerating into the crowds and does not use his brakes, as in the video there are no brake lights visible from the rear of the Honda."

The affidavit also states that Owens ran from the car after it crashed, and was so combative with officers that they twice had to use a Taser to subdue him.

Investigators and Owens' family said the one-time sandwich shop worker came to Austin Wednesday night, with plans to perform a 1 a.m. set at the 1080 Club, a hole-in-the wall venue in near eastside Austin, roughly a mile from the crime scene.

Owens' brother, Lamar Wilson, told a local reporter that he left Owens there to find an older brother downtown, and Owens later came looking for them before the 1 a.m. show.

Instead, their wait ended with the wail of police sirens and throngs of first responders rushing to the horrific scene.

"I can't grasp it. I can't believe it," Wilson told the Austin American-Statesman. "Everything was going good. We were just there trying to perform, and it made a whole other turn."

History of arrests

With Friday's charge, that turn became Owens' latest brush with the law.

Following a string of misdemeanor arrests when he lived in Fairbanks, Alaska - including minor in possession of alcohol, criminal trespass, driving under the influence, leaving the scene of an accident - Owens faced a pending arrest warrant for failure to appear in court, public records show.

After moving back to Killeen, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for criminal trespass and was sentenced to 60 days in jail in 2010, Bell County court records show. He was sentenced to another 60 days in jail in Bell County for criminal trespass from a January 2011 incident.

The tragedy cast a shadow over the final days of the SXSW festival, even as a special fund for the victims raised $75,000 in just 24 hours. Some attendees sought counseling at a center opened by the American Red Cross.

Others, including Lindsey and several rapper friends, briefly pondered the tragedy in their own terms at the crime scene, as crowds stood in line at live-music clubs nearby.

One of Lindsey's friends noted an eerie, almost prescient, quote that Owens posted on his Facebook page in early February.

"If you hit a man in his face, in time, his wounds will heal. And later on, you can apologize to that man. If you steal his goods, later on, you can return those goods, or you can repay him equal value. But if you kill ... there is no later on. There's no way to repair it with that man. There's no way to make it right with him or his family. His life is gone forever. You never come back from that."